


Aware but not all there

by Mozzarella



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Tea Parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 18:44:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3498932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mozzarella/pseuds/Mozzarella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bifur knew Dori to be kind. </p><p>In which Bifur and Dori had teaparties before and long after the Quest. </p><p>----</p><p>A hurried but loving tribute to two lovely dwarves, submitted for the HobbitCon Fanfiction Project 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aware but not all there

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted to post this :) I quite like this one, even if I didn't have time to edit out the run-on sentences =)) Hope you guys like it too!

It was long before the quest that Bifur knew Dori to be kind.

And he _was_ kind. It only took so long before Dori got used to the piece of axe that jutted out of his head like a broken root, and his endless mothering (fussy, Nori had called it, though Bifur did not mind _fussy_ for the company it gave him) had Bifur welcome as a guest at any time when Bofur and Bombur were busy and Bombur's wife Mira was away with the children. 

Bifur did not argue his case as a grown dwarrow. Yes, he had done a lot to care for Bofur and Bombur in their youth, but he could admit when he could be difficult.

“Not unaware, but not all there”, Bombur had said. A witticism that Bofur wished he'd thought up, and a fact at that, Bifur was perfectly aware of what was going on around him, and could still understand Westron as it came. 

But sometimes he would snap back to the moment, and time had passed without his knowledge. Bofur informed him once that he was usually just sitting there, looking off and beyond, or mesmerized by his own creations, when these strange gaps in his memory occurred. When they began to journey and Bifur got his hands on some orcish scum, the blood lust seemed to wash away much of what he remembered as well.

But never were his cousins afraid of him in that. Never did they mention a moment they felt uncomfortable around Bifur (long after they had when Bifur first came to them as kin, fresh after the battle that had cracked his head open), although Bofur oft complained (in good humour) about how he had to pull Bifur along sometimes, or how he'd given up on trying to keep Bifur from eating flowers (elf food! Bofur had exclaimed with a face) and leaves that Bifur had grown accustomed to. They were delicious, and assuredly edible, and sometimes Bifur would laugh (he'd mean to do so quietly, but it would come out as a hearty, somewhat startling chortle) and Dori would jump when he found that the fussy dwarf had laid petals of his favourite flower on a plate for him.

Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur were not dwarves of Erebor, though in the welcoming of their kin from the East, Bifur could remember young Dori, and younger still, Nori, and their baby brother Ori.

Nori, the troublemaker that he was, hit it off with Bofur, much to the newly forged community's chagrin and general wariness.

The Brothers Ri had travelled with their mother to Ered Luin, though she passed away soon after they settled, around the time Bifur left for the battle at Azanulbizar and came back scarred, and not quite the same as he was before.

The friendship of his family and Dori's was a balm, though it began with ginger movements and wide-eyed glances as Dori tried his best not to jostle Bifur or set him off in some way (fresh from battle, many dwarves were the same as Bifur, disturbed and skittish and slowly pushing out memories of the bloodied fields of dwarrow in their minds), but as time went by and Bifur settled, so did Dori and the rest. More so Dori, than the rest.

Dori was kind, in a way that most other dwarrows were not. He would mother, he would fuss, he would talk on and on, comfortable with the company in the way most other dwarrows were not. Sometimes Bifur would realize that time had passed and he had lost the thread of Dori's words, but Dori would never look at him pityingly, never stop for some imagined “consideration” of Bifur's “condition”. He would tut, sigh about nobody ever listening to what he had to say, and Bifur would chuckle and say something in Khuzdul Dori might understand, by way of his education in youth (before the dragon, before the hardships, before Khuzdul in its entirety was lost to the layman and only common phrases survived as young dwarves were raised passing through villages of Men), or by Balin's supplementary teachings when Dori was still somewhat youthful and already tied to his home in Ered Luin, Nori off on some grand adventure or other and Ori taking lessons from the dwarrow with the impressive grey-and-white beard, who was eager to take on a student who was thrice as eager to learn.

Dori was kind, and he was teased often and relentlessly for his mother-henning and his oddly particular tastes, but he was not one to be reckoned with. Bifur learned that long ago, when a set of bandits—coming and going like a whirlwind to every unfortunate settlement they passed through on swift horses—tried their throat-slitting luck on their community. At that time, Ori had been walking home from a lesson, practically at the front door when he was snatched up as a hostage.

It ended with twice-broken fingers and one cracked skull, none of which belonged to a single dwarf. Bifur had arrived late, his eyes wide and his blood roaring, only to find Dori putting the kettle on and Ori sitting at the table, none worse for wear but for a ripped scarf Dori promised he would fix.

Once he had ensured Dwalin and the guards had the cruel men well in hand, promising harsh justice of a dwarrow nature and that of the Men in the previous village they'd passed through, Bifur sat down and Dori served him some tea and talked about his day, explaining how he'd crushed the hands of the man who'd taken Ori by the neck, how he'd made sure he could feel the splinters of his bones before letting go.

He said it like he was musing over what he would prepare for dinner the next day, and Bifur nodded agreeably, plucking a sweet, honeyed flower from the plate and miming what he would have done had he been around, for anyone who would lay a hand on a child like that deserved much more than splintered bones.

Because Dori was kind before the quest, Bifur made every effort to be, during and after. When Dori was teased by Nori and the rest (quite often; the brothers were keen to jab at each other verbally, though hurts were quickly healed when they were unfailing in their protection of their kin), Bifur would pat him comfortingly on the shoulder, one of the few who did not laugh along to Nori's, or Bofur's, jokes.

When they found the troll hoard and his cousins were looking through piles, he offered Dori some sparkling clasps he thought he would appreciate—as well as a goblet, a drinking horn, a strange round-ended thing that looked like a broken chair leg, though at that point he wasn't sure he was getting it quite right when Dori politely refused each of those with a huff.

When they were cold and wet and weary, when Dori's pristine braids were stringy and tangled from their harrowing ordeals, in the time they would find to rest and eat Bifur would offer Nori a particularly crunchy (and largely edible) fresh green which Dori (unlike his brothers, who  _didn't like green food, thank you Mister Bifur_ ) would accept gratefully, whether or not he would eat it along with their rations. 

Though they were sitting atop the cold, hard stone, watching the dragon burn Laketown, then watching it die and returning to the mountain for shelter, it was Dori who clasped his shoulder, startling him out of faraway images of fire, of boiling blood and death by the hundreds, and nearly getting a knock in the head for it when Bifur raged, briefly but hotly, at the dwarf.

“Well if you're going to be that way, fine!” was all Dori said, crossing his arms irritably. There was no fear in his eyes—none of Bifur anyway, though Bifur felt thoroughly remorseful afterwards. Later, he brought a peace offering to Dori when they sat in the eerie quiet of the mountain—a steel kettle engraved with cirth, reading quite plainly “Warm homes for warm hearts”—silly, sentimental, and a relic of the mountain which made Dori laugh delightedly even in the gloom that weighed heavily on them while their king went down to the treasury and, for a long time, did not come up. 

“Perhaps when we find water, we'll be able to boil it in this lovely kettle,” Dori said, and they later settled, sitting across each other on the floor with a makeshift table between them, Dori nibbling on the rations and Bifur quietly eating some mushrooms he knew to be edible. Very briefly, warm to remember but sharply painful to think about when he found himself wondering about his cousin—jovial, sweet, cheeky Bofur, in the Laketown that had burned before their eyes only a day ago, his fate unknown—Bifur was reminded of home. More so, he was reminded of Dori's home, and the afternoons spent in comfortable conversation. 

He wondered if they could have that again, here in this cold, silent kingdom, and how long it would take for the warmth of life, of family and friendship and tea and conversation, to seep back into its halls.

 

“This one's my favourite, you know. A bit beaten up, but I had a smith—who specializes in delicate work, an absolute wizard when it comes to this kind of thing, not literally of course—look at it and pound it right back into shape. I have so many now, more than I can count, and certainly more than the one and the spare I had back in Ered Luin. Oh, but I'm rambling! Of course, I want to know how you are,” Dori said, sitting down and setting down his cup and the steel kettle Bifur had given him years ago. 

For yes, it had been years since Erebor was reclaimed, and Bifur felt those years in the ease with which he travelled the high bridges and low halls. He felt those years as they drifted between him and the memories of fire and ruin and battle. It was that last battle, the one that lost them their king but gained them a new home, that seemed to bring Bifur... peace, in a way.

It was an orc that had put the axe in his head, and it was orcs, by the dozen, perhaps nearer to a hundred or more, that fell by his hand, by his spear and blade, and their victory was much sweeter then than it had been when Bifur awoke clinging to life and sanity, head wound never truly healing.

They were honoured as heroes, though the dwarrows who no longer looked upon him with fear, but with awe, were not his friends. The dwarrows who knew little of him beyond his role as one of Thorin Oakenshield's Company, they were not his friends.

Dori was his friend. Dori, who had found the comfort and refined lifestyle he'd always been craving. Dori, who Bifur gifted with one of the many elegant toys (of eagles, of tiny rams and an elk with great horns, of things that they had seen on the Quest of old which Bifur could see clearly in his mind without losing time anymore) he created for the shop, ran by cheerful, child-loving Bofur and the voluminous and hearty Bombur. Dori, who still invited him over for tea and flowers and cakes (he had found out from Bilbo that some flowers could even be made into cakes, which delighted Dori to no end) and conversation. Dori, whose brothers got along finely with Bifur's kin, who shared experiences few others in the mountain could claim to understand.

Dori, who, at the end of the battle—when they were all together as a Company, gathered to remember the fallen or to ease each other's hurts, or whatever it was they were together for—thanked Bifur for being so kind, to whom Bifur, as clearly as he could manage, explained that he did nothing that Dori had not already done for him.

Dori, who after all this time, Bifur still knew to be kind, though it might have taken years for him to realize it himself.

And Bifur was, as Dori's friend, glad to see it happen, over tea, over visits, over laughter and talk and happier reminiscences.

“Bifur? Bifur, are you even listening to me?” 

No, it seemed he was not.

“Oh, Mahal, you silly old dwarf. Well, I suppose there's nothing for it. Anyway, as I was saying, Ori was just glowing today, and Nori, well, he may not admit it, but he's happy to see his brother grow into something even remotely respectable—not that he ever managed it, even now...” 

 

.end.

 

 


End file.
